Supplying Your Own Work PC to Become Mandatory?

Supplying Your Own Work PC to Become Mandatory?

CIO.com has been trailblazing coverage of BYOD’s end user hazards and the legal slippery slope for employers.

The latest story by CIO blogger Tom Kaneshige is based on Gartner’s prediction that BYOD will mandatory by 2017. That would mean employees become responsible for their own PC, tablet, smart phone or whatever the company specifies — as a condition of employment. In return, the employer would offer employee stipends to cover the monthly business costs and possibly acquisition.

It sounds simple enough, but where it gets dicey is giving the employer access to an employee’s personal life a la their smart phone, for instance (presumably, this is why companies are so interested in mobile device virtualization, but that’s another story.).

No doubt, many job candidates will want a job badly enough to sign anything and then hope for the best. But such agreements and releases of liability always favor the employer, often overwhemingly so. Indeed, I’ve signed a few such things, hoping they’d never come into play.